


What remains here of paradise

by Solshine



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Oneshot, characters projecting shamelessly upon houseplants, taking a stand on the who prefers the ice lolly and who prefers the vanilla with a flake controversy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:34:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25010953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solshine/pseuds/Solshine
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley discuss what became of Eden.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 75





	What remains here of paradise

**Author's Note:**

> just a short little thing as I climb out of the WIP swamp. More on the way!

“Guess I always assumed it went the way of everything else in the Flood,” Crowley said, licking a drip off the edges of his ice cream cone. Aziraphale shook his head.  
  
“Not at all,” he said. “We saved it.”  
  
Crowley paused, and frowned.  
  
“Saved it?” he repeated skeptically. “As in Eden’s still out there? All right, I’ll bite. Where’ve you hidden it?”

Aziraphale shook his head again and licked his ice lolly.  
  
“Not like that. It’s everywhere.”

“Everywhere? If this is some sort of touchy feely metaphor-”

“What?” Aziraphale interrupted. “No, they went in for biomes after the Flood, remember?” He nibbled the softened edge of the lolly and looked up into the incredulous expression half hidden behind Crowley’s sunglasses. “We had to break it up and distribute all the plants to appropriate ecosystems,” Aziraphale explained. “The Garden is literally all over the world.”

Crowley scoffed.

“What,” he said, “like the beeb reusing old set pieces from a cancelled show?” He bit his ice cream as punctuation, and Aziraphale shot him an irritated look.  
  
“More like an estate being disseminated among the inheritors,” Aziraphale corrected. “Here now, hold on.”  
  
Aziraphale stopped on the park pathway, and Crowley did too. The demon waited patiently as Aziraphale closed his eyes and lifted his face just a little, like he was trying to identify a faint smell or locate a distant strain of music. Red syrup dripped onto Aziraphale’s knuckles, and Crowley slurped at his ice cream.

After a moment, Aziraphale turned on his heel and pointed off to the left. 

“That way,” he declared, and tramped resolutely off the paved path.

Crowley followed, but he had been expecting Aziraphale to lead them to some lovely flowerbed or ancient tree. What he wasn’t expecting was for the angel to stop in front of some modest and fairly unkempt park shrubbery.

“Here,” Aziraphale said, and pointed to the shadows under a bush.  
  
Crowley squatted by the shrub, eating his ice cream in as dubious a manner as possible as he looked where Aziraphale was pointing.  
  
“...That’s a weed,” Crowley pointed out dryly. “That thing was in the Garden? And now it’s in St. James Park, six thousand years later?”  
  
“It’s a thistle. There were a lot of plants in the Garden,” Aziraphale responded. “They all had to go somewhere.”

Crowley looked back at the humble thing in front of him.

“Yes,” he said again. “But that’s a weed.”

“It is a thistle,” Aziraphale repeated with a dignified sniff. “There were no weeds in Paradise. There were, however, a selection of thistles.” He licked his ice lolly delicately. “Weeds are an invention of gardeners.”

Crowley peered up at Aziraphale over his sunglasses.  
  
“I think a weed, by definition, is anything you don’t want in your garden,” Crowley pointed out. “Or your Garden. Even if this thing was wanted somewhere once, it is now certainly a weed.” Crowley looks back at the thistle -- a little drab, a little dingy, even for a thistle. “No matter what Gardener you ask.”

“It’s an important part of creation,” Aziraphale said, with a little more heat than Crowley thought a thistle deserved. “And no matter what anyone calls it now, it bears the fingerprints of its Creator, and it has value.”  
  
“Well all right,” said Crowley, holding up his free hand soothingly. He sized the thistle up, considering. “Suppose I have to respect the little thing for still being alive.”  
  
“After this long, it’s hard to kill one of them,” Aziraphale said, apparently placated. Crowley grinned at the thought of a weed that had been defying being pruned or uprooted for millennia. He looked at the spiky little monster with new respect. “You could take the blossom as a buttonhole, if you like,” Aziraphale added. “The plant will be fine.”

Crowley shook his head and stood again.

“Nah,” he said. “Let it go on confounding the groundskeepers.” He pulled the flake bar out of his cone and held it out, and Aziraphale accepted it with a small pleased sound. “Anyway,” Crowley said, “nobody wears buttonholes anymore.”

They moved on, back to the path and other avenues of conversation. But Crowley thought about the thistle all day.

  
  


* * *

A few weeks later, Crowley opened the door of his flat to Aziraphale’s knock, and found the angel holding a small, shabby potted plant, and looking very pleased with himself. 

Crowley peered at the little flower critically over the top of his sunglasses.

“What is that?” he asked. 

“It’s a geranium!“ beamed Aziraphale.

“Got that,” Crowley drawled, stepping aside to let Aziraphale into the flat and closing the door behind him. “ _Why_ have you brought me a geranium?”

Aziraphale tilted his head and regarded Crowley, still holding the geranium with both hands in front of his chest.

“Can you really not sense it at all?” Aziraphale said, and Crowley pulled off his glasses to take a closer look. 

The thing was a little crooked, and too big for the dirty plastic cup it was inhabiting, its frilly scarlet petals drooping over Aziraphale’s hand. But when he leaned in, looked hard, there was… something there, a different quality to the oxygen that exuded from its faded leaves. 

“It’s… an original?” he guessed, and Aziraphale nodded proudly.

“Searched every garden centre in London, and finally found one.”

He held the flower out and Crowley took it from him, holding it up and frowning.

“It’s got spots,” Crowley observed. Aziraphale’s face creased in hurt, and Crowley backpedaled hurriedly. “I mean, you know, I appreciate it, obviously!” he insisted, snatching the plastic pot to his chest. “It’s just, it’s like the thistle, isn’t it? Not what you’d expect.” He looked down at it again, and sighed. “And I’ve got, you know, a system for dealing with spots. Can’t very well make an example of a plant from the Garden, can I?”

Aziraphale pulled his shoulders back, and straightened his waistcoat over his generous middle.

“Been a long time since the Garden for all of us,” he said. “Suppose you’ll just have to forgive it for not being what it once was.”

Crowley looked up at the fidgeting angel, and his fingers tightened around the pot.

“It’s perfect just how it is,” he blurted. “I love it.”

The self-conscious frown on Aziraphale’s face gave way to a warm smile, in spite of Crowley’s apparent inconsistency in his feelings toward geraniums. Crowley strode hastily over to his nearly empty desk and, after a beat of consideration, set the flower down just off center, near the telephone.

“I’ll have to get a different pot for it,” he said. “Big enough to fit the roots, they’re all cramped in that one. And I’m not sure there’s enough direct light in here for geraniums…”

His planning was interrupted by a kiss pressed to his frowning mouth, which broke off his considerations entirely. He looked up with a growing grin at a dimpling Aziraphale.

“What was that for?” Crowley asked, but Aziraphale only smiled.

“It’s quarter til four,” the angel offered. “We could go for tea if you like.”

“At Candella, perhaps?” said Crowley, pulling a jacket out of the air and shrugging it on. “Maybe get that flowerpot afterward.”

The door shut behind them, and on the desk, Eden bloomed. 


End file.
